Download James, Dewey, and Democracy

JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
______________________________________________________________________________
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
ABSTRACT
In this paper I examine John Dewey's correspondence and selected writings to illuminate
Dewey's understanding of and possible shaping of William James's work as it pertains to
politics and democracy. I suggest a way of seeing a richer connection between the
thinkers than has been portrayed and a picture of influence flowing from Dewey to
James.
INTRODUCTION
In this essay, I agree with those scholars who see William James as a democratic thinker.1
This claim may seem controversial insofar as James and John Dewey are often paired together
and Dewey is thought of as the more socially and politically oriented of the two. Specifically,
Cornel West and Robert Westbrook have argued that James was surprisingly uninterested in
political matters.2 No doubt, Dewey’s work is more directly concerned with political issues of
education, ethics, and collaborative social efforts than James’s. It is a common approach to
conceive of James as a solitary thinker who laid the ground for Dewey’s work. In fact, the
common ordering of the names, Peirce, James, and Dewey, often misleads newcomers to
pragmatism to think that developments in their thought occurred chronologically from one to the
next.
Throughout this paper, a broader theme will be developed, whose surface Ralph Sleeper
has scratched in The Necessity of Pragmatism. That theme is the encouragement that Dewey’s
work represented for James.
Dewey explicitly urged James to work more specifically on the problems of philosophy,
beyond his earlier focus on psychology. Although psychology was burgeoning in America, both
James and Dewey moved away from it as a field of study when it came to focus on laboratory
work. I imagine that a number of factors were relevant to James’s move toward philosophy, not
William James Studies
2009, Vol. 4, pp. 90-110
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
91
the least of which was the completion of his thirteen-hundred page opus, The Principles of
Psychology, which took approximately a decade to finish beyond the due date his publisher had
in mind.
Among other scholars, Joshua Miller has offered some initial ways to present the case for
thinking of James as having a Democratic Temperament. Whereas Miller’s analysis is focused
on James’s work, my approach here is to make my case more from Dewey’s letters to James,
urging an increasingly explicit pronunciation of democratic ideals. The democratic impulse is
one of the many features of James’s thought that has not received a great deal of attention,
perhaps because of the motivations for calling him an individualist.3
James’s democratic
tendencies begin with the scientific ethos that avoids tyrannical thinking in favor of evidence.
Dewey’s encouragement in correspondence with James is an underexplored factor in the
development of James’s move further into philosophy and in the expansion of the democratic
ideal which drives it.
JAMES AND DEWEY
JAMES’S INFLUENCE ON DEWEY
Since my main focus will be on the reverse relation, James’s influence on Dewey is
worth making clear, as least briefly. As is well known, Dewey’s earliest works are driven by
Hegelian influences. In a review of Sleeper’s The Necessity of Pragmatism, Larry Hickman
explains that Sleeper “sees Dewey’s lifework as an attempt to find a mean between the extremes
of [Hegelian] idealism and scholastic realism.” 4 Over a certain interval, Dewey shakes loose
some of his Hegelian baggage and ventures into his own work. His early volume on psychology,
still heavily Hegelian, is not well received by James. In a letter to George Croom Robertson, in
December of 1886, James writes, “Dewey is out with a psychology which I have just rec’d and
but ½ read. I felt quite ‘enthused’ at the first glance, hoping for something really fresh; but am
sorely disappointed when I come to read [it].”5
It is worth noting with regard to James’s criticism here, that when writing this letter
James is four years away from completing a twelve-year opus of his own on psychology. To
impress James in the field of psychology, therefore, would likely be difficult at this point in his
career. Four years later, James’s The Principles of Psychology is published, receiving high
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
92
acclaim. Not the least of this is Dewey’s praise. In a letter to James in May of 1891, Dewey
writes,
I don’t know that I told you that I have had a class of four graduates going through your
psychology this year, and how much we have all enjoyed it. I’m sure you would be
greatly gratified if you could see what a stimulus to mental freedom, as well as what a
purveyor of methods and materials your book has been to us.6
As a fellow psychologist, Dewey was markedly and immediately impressed by James’s work.
Beyond James’s new approach to psychology, Dewey is equally impressed with James’s
writing style. Textbooks are often dry and dead. The vibrant style of James’s writings, however,
animates the work in an entirely novel way. In a letter to James from February of 1892, Dewey
writes,
One of my friends summed up Sully’s review [of the Principles] in [the journal]
Mind for me as follows: ‘A good book, but too lively to make a good corpse and
every scientific book ought to be a corpse.’ If we weren’t indebted to you for any
specific things, we should be indebted to you for what you did to break down this
superstition. 7
Two further letters from Dewey to James concerning the latter’s influence help to bring out
Dewey’s understanding and contribution with regard to James’s work. First, in January, 1904,
Dewey writes, “I need hardly say what I have said before, such approval as you feel drawn to
give means more to us than that of anybody else. None the less as far as I am concerned I have
simply been rendering back in logical vocabulary what was already your own.”8 Dewey is no
doubt responding to the praise James has given him for Dewey’s work on psychology and
education. He clearly sees his work as an extension of James’s psychology. In 1907, Dewey
writes of his “appreciation of and indebtedness to, all you do.”9 In what follows, I will present
the result of Dewey’s shift from Hegelian thinking to a new and exciting ethics, which James
praises and builds on.
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
93
JAMES IN PRAISE OF DEWEY
Before discussing Dewey’s encouragement of James, a few of James’s letters about and
to Dewey are worth citing, showing James’s great praise of Dewey’s work. The anomaly cited
above, of James criticizing Dewey, reveals an early, first impression of Dewey as a Hegel
scholar. Dewey’s early work on ethics, psychology, logic, and education, progressing away from
idealism, all receive great praise from James, and resemble James’s later work in that regard.
As early as July of 1896, James writes of Dewey to Alice Howe Gibbens James. He
recounts, “I heard a lecture by John Dewey at 2.30, & another by Bryan … both very good.
Unfortunately Dewey has already left – I should have stayed on indefinitely to hear more of his
lectures.”10 As of the writing of this paper, we still do not know which works James is referring
to here, but around that time, Dewey writes on psychology, education, schools, ethics, cultureepoch theory, metaphysics and much more.11
Later in a letter to Sarah Wyman Whitman of October 1903, James writes,
Chicago University has during the past 6 months given birth to the fruit of its 10
years of gestation under John Dewey. The result is wonderful – a real School,
and real Thought. Important thought too! Did you ever hear of such a City or
such a University? Here we have thought, but no school. At Yale a school but no
thought. Chicago has both.12
Here we see the seeds of what James refers to by Dewey’s inspiration in Pragmatism.13 Dewey,
or so James believes, has really developed a school of thought, and of course, James sees the way
in which his work is congruous with it.
In a letter to F. C. S. Schiller from April of 1906, James describes his agreement with
Dewey’s rejection of treating the world as propositional. Some see philosophy as the logical
working out of the world’s problems, only because the world is a set of propositions or facts that
can be analyzed logically.
Dewey, with his emphasis on the complexity of the world of
experience, recognizes early that we must not view experience in such a limited fashion. An
excellent example is his reply to James’s discussion of reflexes, in “The Reflex Arc Concept in
Psychology.”14 In that article, Dewey notes the mechanistic rendition of reflexes and the story
that psychology has been telling about them with regard to memory and habit formation. Dewey
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
94
criticizes the Meynert scheme, which James introduces, for not at all taking into account the
complexity of the environment in which a child encounters stimuli.
Dewey shows the
continually popular notions of stimulus and response to be dangerously oversimplified. It is
more accurate to say that stimulus and response are two sides of one thing – experience. And, in
a sense, response comes first. The child who reaches for a candle and learns from the burn was
not struck by a stimulus. He or she found it interesting and selected it for attention over any
number of possible subject matters. James appreciates and accepts Dewey’s version of the world
as complex and not merely “sentenced.”
Though we describe experience linguistically,
experience itself is not immediately sentenced. To Schiller, James writes, “Dewey’s powerful
stuff seems also to ring the death knell of a sentenced world. Yet none of them will see it –
Taylor will still write his refutations etc, etc, when the living world will be all drifting after us.”15
Here we have an explicit reference from James, taking Dewey and himself to be working almost
as a team on pulling scholarship out into the world of the living, bringing intelligence to life
outside the oppressive confines of academic tradition.
In another letter to Schiller, from August of 1906, James writes, “I find Dewey’s article
… [‘The Experimental Theory of Knowledge,’16] most illuminating & masterly.”17 Among the
works James has yet to write at this point are Pragmatism, The Meaning of Truth, A Pluralistic
Universe, Some Problems of Philosophy, as well as numerous articles.
As Robert T. Westbrook points out, when Dewey criticized an element of James’s work,
James then reconsidered. Westbrook writes,
Dewey was selective in what he incorporated into his thought from the Principles,
for it was a profoundly conflicted, even contradictory, text, torn between
epistemological dualism and an antidualistic “radical empiricism” grounded in
evolutionary biology. Dewey was sharply critical of remnants of dualism and
“subjectivism” in James’s thinking, while at the same time he responded
enthusiastically to the “objective” biological strain–the rooting of human
psychology in organic experience and history–that he found in the Principles. 18
If Westbrook is right, then it seems Dewey’s strong criticism of James’s dualisms could have
been an important reason why James distanced himself from dualistic thinking, to be the proud
expositor of “radical empiricism” as a focused and important approach to inquiry.
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
95
One last letter by James bears mentioning here before we proceed to the specifics of
Dewey’s encouragement and advice for James. In a kind letter to Dewey from August of 1908,
James writes to Dewey about his contribution to a volume in James’s honor.19 Dewey’s article,
“Does Reality Possess Practical Character?” inspires James’s words as follows:
Your own contribution is to my mind the most weighty – unless perhaps Strong’s
should prove to be so. I rejoice exceedingly that you should have got it out. No
one yet has succeeded, it seems to me, in jumping into the centre of your vision.
Once there, all the perspectives are clear and open; and when you or some one
else of us shall have spoken the exact word that opens the centre to everyone,
mediating between it and the old categories and prejudices, people will wonder
that there ever could have been any other philosophy. That is the philosophy of
the future, I’ll bet my life. 20
It is easy to envision James as one who is simply aware of Dewey’s work when he gives his
Lowell Lectures on Pragmatism, for instance. The centrality of Dewey’s thought for James,
however, is dramatically underestimated given that presumption.
DEWEY’S ENCOURAGEMENT OF JAMES
In The Necessity of Pragmatism, Ralph Sleeper shows the importance of Dewey’s logical
theory for the development of pragmatism and its influence on James, though this latter relation
is not his focus. He makes clear the fact that Dewey follows James with respect to experience,
but differs with him with regard to necessity. Dewey’s work against James’s psychologism of
necessity – making necessity a matter of mental structure – represents a great divergence
between them. For Dewey, the “superstition of necessity” is a logical consequence of James’s
account of experience in the Principles. Yet, James would not come to see necessity in the way
Dewey does until later in life.
Not long after the publication of James’s Principles, Dewey writes him an excited letter21
about an inspiring reporter whom Dewey has met. Franklin Ford, previously affiliated with
Bradstreet's publications in New York, inspires Dewey to write James the following in June of
1891:
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
96
… [T]here is something back (& something ahead) of whatever freedom
of sight & treatment there is in my ethics. I got it from Franklin Ford to whom I
refer in the preface … Ford who was a newspaperman (formerly Editor of
Bradstreets in N.Y.) with no previous [philosophical] training had been led by his
newspaper experience to study, as a practical question the social bearings of
intelligence & its distribution … Well, he identified the question of inquiry with,
in philosophical terms, the question of the relation of intelligence to the objective
world – is the former free to move in relation to the latter or not? So he studied
out the following questions (1) The conditions & effects of the distribution of
intelligence especially with reference to inquiry, or the selling of truth as a
business; (2) the present (or past) hindrances to its free play, in the way of class
interests or (3) the present conditions, in the railway, the telegraph &c for
effectively securing the freedom of intelligence – that is, its movement in the
world of social fact, and (4) the resulting organization …
Now I am simply reducing what was a wonderful personal experience to a crude
bit of cataloging, but I hope it may arouse your interest in the man and his work…
… [P]hilosophy has been the assertion of [the] unity of intelligence & the
external world in idea or subjectively, while if true in idea it must finally secure
the conditions of its objective expression.
And secondly I believe that a
tremendous movement is impending when the intellectual forces which have been
gathering since the Renascence & Reformation shall demand complete free
movement, and, by getting their physical leverage in the telegraph & printing
press shall through free inquiry in a centralized way, demand the authority of all
other so-called authorities. 22
What we find here is a muddled message from Dewey to James, in excitement over a new way of
thinking that inspires Dewey in its democratic promise. At this point, Dewey is still quite young,
and is getting his own philosophical feet wet. Nevertheless, there is no doubt to the numerous
connections one can easily make between Ford’s inspiration of Dewey and Dewey’s
encouragements of James into philosophical issues of pragmatism and democratic pluralism.
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
97
While the notion of “intelligence” is brought up in James, and, while it plays an important role in
his philosophy, it is not developed until Dewey takes the notion further.
In this letter we see Dewey’s invitation for James to join in the project of democratic
intelligence and philosophy. The salient notion here is the sense in which philosophy, ideas,
facts, and truth, all have practical value for life, and can work in the effort of social and political
improvement. I want to suggest the following three types of connection between this letter and
developments in James’s later philosophy.
1. Concerning pragmatism. In this letter, we see explicit mention of the idea that truth
has a cash value – literally for the journalist. Truth can be “sold,” but not in the sense that it can
be changed on whim for a buck. Rather, objective aspects of the world and its truth are of great
value, cash value. This is a clear and recurrent theme in James’s later philosophical work on
pragmatism. One other element seems clearly relatable to even more technical understandings of
pragmatism, though the passage is admittedly jumbled. Dewey writes about the need for ideas to
secure consequences in the objective world.
It is not enough for ideas to be true only
subjectively for the idealist. Ideas must have value and meaning in real life.
2. Concerning pluralism. On the question of the freedom of intelligence, we can see
elements of epistemology and metaphysics. I say both here because if there are objective and
subjective features to the world, a common theme for James and Dewey, then the idea that a
movement is in the works, according to Dewey, which is similar to the Reformation, implies that
the movement in question is one which shatters the centralization of authority in religious, or in
this case epistemological leaders. That is, each individual’s religious liberties were expanded in
validating individuals’ direct experience of religion in the Reformation, and similarly, social
intelligence is valued in democracy, validating each individual’s right and freedom to voice
concerns of his or her own, contributing to public inquiry into social problems. Various world
views must be acknowledged, according to James’s later writings, in the working out of belief,
and here we see Dewey bubbling over with his excitement in encouraging James to make the
connection as well. 23
3. Concerning religion.
What I have just mentioned about James’s pluralism is
noticeable too in his work on religion. Before the Reformation, there were strong divisions of
class and authority in religious deliberations. Dewey notes this parallel in the Ford letter when
describing Ford’s desire to overcome class interests’ influence on the distribution of intelligence.
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
98
Fundamentally, Dewey urges James to consider the validity of the experiences of a plurality of
people, and Dewey does this with explicit reference to a tremendous movement like the
Reformation. This set of ideas fuses four crucial elements of James’s later thought: a, religion;
b, pluralism; c, the validation of individuals’ experiences; and d, the challenging of conventional
authorities.
A few months later, in November of 1891, Dewey asks James the following influential
question: “If the organic theory of intelligence is true as theory isn’t it time something was done
to make it true as fact, that is as practice? This inquiry has been bottled up in my mind so long
that it now discharges at you as the most convenient target.”24 Dewey’s position with regard to
the organic nature of intelligence is not James’s, though it is an extension of his psychology.
James’s notion of intelligence demands much working out – a task which Dewey takes up. What
we find here, however, is the thread of asking about the use of the organic theory of intelligence.
That is to say, why not develop a practical method based upon the theory of intelligence got from
Darwin and James’s psychology? This question, posed only a year after the publication of the
Principles is an incisive prompting to get James thinking about the grander issues of philosophy
and how they can be addressed by a method based on his psychological theory.
Aside from these foundational questions and urgings, Dewey also advises James
elsewhere on the specifics of his work and on the burgeoning pragmatic method. In December
of 1903, Dewey writes James about the habit of making a “personal tool out of discussion &
inquiry out of a ‘point of view’ – And that is a good criterion – for a pragmatist anyway.” He
continues,
“Truth for its own sake” has upon complete pragmatic principles it seems to me
not only a justification, but an absolutely indispensable function – without which
the last word would be with an “environment” which finally determines what is &
what isn’t useful – and it make[s] little difference whether this environment is
called “matter” or a complete system of thought-relations, or Experience per
Bradley, or per Royce. 25
The idea we see here is that the search for truth for its own sake minimizes bias in inquiry, which
for that reason is valuable and pragmatic as such. It would be a mistake to think that Dewey was
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
99
James’s sole inspiration for pragmatism, of course. What I suggest is that Dewey was more of a
sympathetic motivator, passionate about the same project.
To give the development of
pragmatism some perspective, James presents his early pragmatic essay, "Philosophical
Conceptions and Practical Results," in 1898 in Berkeley, California.
Nevertheless, Dewey
represents an important colleague for James, not merely a follower.
In many senses, James’s psychology, particularly in relation to habits, is tied to his
ethical views. Indeed, Dewey takes this connection and runs with it. Education becomes the
foundational ethical endeavor of living well in a community – reinforcing good habits through
the use of intelligent, social inquiry. This connection, sown in James’s Principles, is pushed
further by Dewey in November of 1904. Regarding James’s empiricism and its relation to the
metaphysics that underlies Pragmatism, Dewey writes,
Of course, we come back afterward everywhere, to the difficulty of stating the
nature & reasons of the fact that the objective, – the fire which burns, –is pliable,
& submits to the exactions which we, in our subjective or psychical capacity,
make of upon it – But if it be true, as it seems to me to be true, that the subjective
is identical with reference to it functioning in an autobiography, this is just the
fundamental question of morals – the interaction of persons and things –, or …
the relation of personal freedom & the stable order.
And one of the many
advantages of the pragmatic approach is that it identifies this ethical problem with
the general problem of the relations of the objective & subjective in experience,
instead of … leaving the ethical in a small corner by … itself. 26
The ethical, according to both James and Dewey, is a matter that pervades all of our experience.
These thinkers find the notion of a distinction between matters of fact and matters of value
misguided. Surely, this is not to deny the value of science. Rather, science, inquiry, and
knowledge all point toward the same notion of intelligence, the formation of good, habituated
behavior. As such, science itself is an ethical endeavor, as is art, and both just as much as
politics.
In 1909, the year before James’s death, Dewey pushed James to clarify his notions of
pragmatism and radical empiricism. Dewey felt “impertinent enough to ask” about particular
essays and phrasings. In February of 1909, he writes,
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
100
You will pardon this suggestion I hope but it seems to me that you concede, for
the sake of better understanding, to the critic that ‘a happening is the … same as a
truth’ is to admit the very point in which his own confusion resides, and by
encouraging him in that confusion … prevent exactly the better understanding
which you have aimed at?27
Dewey here corrects James’s often overreaching efforts to explain to others the pragmatic point
of view and its theory of truth. It is likely that James’s effort was due to his great desire to be
inclusive and understanding of those who did not yet grasp his ideas. What distinguishes James
and Dewey from so many others is their attention to the questions not only of philosophy, but
about philosophy. What is it good for? How can it help us live well? Dewey also warned James
to work more on the project of his germinal notion of pluralism, which Dewey saw as
foundational to James’s democratic spirit.
I hope that what I have said so far has done enough to show the rich relationship these
two shared in philosophy.
A towering intellect in his own right, James nevertheless was
certainly encouraged in Dewey’s engagements with him.
The next section explores this
relationship with focus on the theme of democracy and pluralism.
DEMOCRACY AND PLURALISM
In this section, I will show some of the ways that Dewey urged James to focus on the
matter of pluralism and democratic political ideals, such as the matter of social intelligence that
arose in Dewey’s letter about Ford.
A brief passage in Dewey’s letter to James from 1903 focuses on pluralism. Keep in
mind, James’s A Pluralistic Universe was published six years later, in 1909. In 1903, Dewey
advises James, “I think you must state your Plurality as a matter of historic significance (& hence
of relativity) as well as the Universal, Unity &c.”28 Dewey was an important and most careful
reader of James’s work. What is more, Dewey gained James’s respect early in his career. So,
when Dewey writes James with a recommendation concerning his work and what would be
worth developing further, James is likely to have listened.
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
101
So far an important element of my categorization of James depends upon the idea that
pluralism is important for democracy.
Although James is justly criticized as one who is
insufficiently political, 29 he nevertheless is concerned with issues foundational to democracy.
Dewey believes that the elements essential to what “…democracy really means…” include “…its
essential pluralism, experimentalism and consequent toleration.” And, he continues, “it may be
that the best thing which can happen to the ideal of democracy is to be put on the defensive. For
then it will no longer remain a vague optimism, a weak benevolent aspiration, at the mercy of
favorable circumstances … It will recognize the infinite variety of human nature, and the infinite
plurality of purposes for which men associate themselves together.”30 The notion that it is good
for democracy to be on the defensive evokes James’s chapter on habit in the Principles – one
must keep one’s habits flexible and adaptable, or else they will harden like any other
undemocratic monism.
Recall the passage in Dewey’s letter to James about Ford. Already at that point Dewey
was emphasizing to James the importance of social intelligence and the tremendous movement
that parallels the religious Reformation. We each have a part to play in the search for truth,
because truth for James and Dewey is perspectival. Thus, democracy, if it is to be grounded on
intelligent social inquiry, as Dewey would insist it must be, demands that the many different and
changing voices contribute to the pursuit and exploitation of the fullest inquiry possible. With
the break from accepted religious authorities that came with the Reformation, so too did Dewey
and James see the potential for freer and greater adaptability of social practices. As scholar
James T. Kloppenberg has written regarding James’s political philosophy, “Norms cannot be
imposed on a polity any more than they can be imposed on an individual; they must be chosen
voluntarily and validated in action by the community. As I have noted, James described history
as the ongoing effort to ‘find the more and more inclusive ideal.’” 31 Here we see the sense in
which consent is a concept that is better suited to democratic theory if a more inclusive and
adaptable form of government is maintained, allowing future generations their own opportunity
to accept or reject the practices and decisions of previous generations.
One of the ways that James showed his desire to address a variety of audiences was
evident even in his presentational style. In a letter to Arthur F. Bentley of August 1942, Dewey
writes,
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
102
What you say about the tendency of James to adapt himself to the audience he
was addressing is sound and shrewd. Of course we all do it to some extent, but
James to an unusual degree.
I think there were two causes.
James had a
democratic respect for the beliefs of others if they were sincere – (he was inclined
probably to be a little overgenerous in assuming sincerity) and he was an artist
with the artist[’]s desire to communicate.32
The trait Dewey describes here, of adapting to one’s audience, is a democratic virtue. Indeed, in
Plato’s dialogues, Socrates strays from his dialectical method in the Gorgias, as his interlocutors
demand speeches and pontification. James, no doubt, believes in adaptation, as does Dewey.
The skill of varying one’s approach to different situations is vital for natural, biological
endeavors just as much as it is for social, ethical, and educational ones. When the student does
not learn the notion or process this way, you say it or present it in another way until he or she
does. Adaptation and attention to differences and pluralities are the mark of the democratic and
of its foundation – education.
What sort of pluralism are we talking about in James’s work? In Dewey’s article,
“Pragmatic Acquiescence,” he describes the influence on James of the pioneer life. Dewey
replies to Lewis Mumford’s criticism that James mistakes the experiences of a generation – the
pioneers – for the experience of all. Dewey explains that James’s pluralistic, pioneer analogy
describes the universe as “…not all closed and settled, which is still in some respects
indeterminate and in the making, which is adventurous and which implicates all who share in it,
whether by acting or believing, in its own perils.” Dewey continues, “one who has not studied
James patiently enough to learn how this idea is wrought into his treatment of all special topics,
from the will to believe to his pluralism, from his empiricism to his moral and religious ideas,
has not got far in knowledge of James.”33 All in peril have a claim and a stake in knowledge of
public problems. Dewey here is pointing out the importance of understanding James’s grand,
vital view of the universe that bubbles up in all his theories. Dewey believes, furthermore, that
James is the primary proponent of this view. Elsewhere he writes, “The term pluralism is very
recent in English … James has probably done more than anyone else to give it currency, in his
Will to Believe (see preface in particular).”34
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
103
It is important to see the relation between pluralism and democracy for both Dewey and
James. Among the views that each fought was the immutable: for instance, the idea of the great
chain of being, 35 the notion that human beings are part of a set of unchanging things in the world,
ranked higher or lower on a spectrum of proximity to the divine.
When Dewey ventured to
criticize the notion that the so-called “savages” were indeed under-developed white persons,
James was very much in agreement with Dewey’s sentiment. In fact, in a letter to Dewey from
September of 1902, James writes,
Having just read your “Savage Mind” article in the Psych. Rev. for May, I cannot
refrain from thanking you for a thing so “concrete” and full of veracious
psychological imagination. Also humane, and calculated to dampen the conceit
of our all destroying “Civilization.” Pray keep up that line of study. 36
James is referring, of course, to Dewey’s “Interpretation of Savage Mind.” 37 In that article,
Dewey rejects the notion that the so-called savages have inferior or undeveloped minds. He
writes,
The psychical attitudes and traits of the savage are more than stages through
which mind has passed, leaving them behind. They are outgrowths which have
entered decisively into further evolution, and as such form an integral part of the
framework of present mental organization. Such positive significance is
commonly attributed, in theory at least, to animal mind; but the mental structure
of the savage, which presumably has an even greater relevancy for genetic
psychology, is strangely neglected.38
The democratic spirit in which James and Dewey continually grow finds an important source in
this notion of transition and variability.
I have mentioned that the idea of consent is a way to link the notion of pluralism with
democracy. It bears fleshing out in relation to the ideas of transition and variability. These two
ideas arose to prominence in James’s and Dewey’s thinking first as biological ideas. Organisms
survive as species when they are able to adapt to their environments. When you consider James
and Dewey’s historical context, with the Civil War only a generation earlier than theirs, the idea
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
104
of adaptability would have appeared crucial for government as much as for species. The country
was rebuilding after a conflict concerning the consent or dissent that some Americans exhibited
with regard to the government. Americans, as Dewey noted in the Ford letter, were growing a
movement similar to the Reformation. Each citizen has a direct contribution and value in
considering the true or best government. Both James and Dewey fought the social contract
tradition’s idea of consent, handed down through theory and ahistorical ideas. Consider, by
contrast, James’s statement in his essay, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” that “there
is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance.” 39 Ethics
must be developed, not in idea prior to engagement with others, but in the transactions among
different individuals who each brings a unique perspective to the table.
Even in Dewey’s early essays, though he is still entrenched in his Hegelianism, we find
the spirit of democracy emerging and in a way that James takes up later in the name of pluralism.
It offers a starting point for what we find later in the article on savage mind. Dewey writes,
In primitive societies morality is identified with the customs of the community;
and these customs, receiving religious sanction, are thus binding religiously as
well as morally. This fact tends to retard the growth of any theory of conduct.
Custom when consecrated by religion is the essence of conservatism. 40
Here, Dewey lays out the danger of conservatism – the doctrine of holding a monistic,
unchanging view of the world. It is solidified in religion, and halts moral progress. If the world
is indeed always changing in the way James later describes, the most dangerous position one can
hold is an unchanging one.
Democracy demands adaptation, malleability, openness and
experimentation. It demands an ethical approach that is suited for the type of changing universe
we inhabit.
Whenever the notions of change, adaptation, and pluralism are mentioned, there are those
who cringe at the danger these words represent to the conservative way of life: if we hold a
pluralistic view of the world and values, then everything will become meaningless. Discussing
just this problem raised by critics of James, Dewey writes,
James shows us that people were laboring under a misapprehension when they
feared that the concept of pluralism would lead to chaos, and when they therefore
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
105
insisted upon forcing all experience into one mold of system and unity. But as a
matter of fact, if we change our viewpoint and see human experience as a stream
of consciousness which runs ceaselessly, there is need for both monism and
pluralism in interpreting the phenomenon. In any case, human experience has
ceased to be a “thing,” a dead concept; it is a living entity, and may be examined
in a monistic frame of reference, or in a pluralistic one, as the nature of the
occasion demands. 41
Here, Dewey makes sure the point is clear – that pluralism is not an invariable notion to employ
in all cases. Indeed, monism is sometimes called for depending on the situation at hand.
CONCLUSION
Much of this discussion has been phrased by Dewey’s pen. I take this approach to show
where in Dewey’s work we might see the areas that James was encouraged in examining the
democratic matter of a practical philosophy attentive to the societal changes surrounding them in
their pluralistic contemporary context.42 The ultimate evidence of James’s spirit of democracy,
however, is in his own words. In a letter to Ralph Barton Perry of July 1909, James sums up his
democratic sentiment in his discussion of what he likes of Perry’s The Moral Economy. 43 He
writes, “What I care for most is the reasoned faith in radical democracy, and the smiting and
sweeping sentences in which every now and then it comes to the fore, scouting the pedantic,
conventional, and scholastic alternatives, whatever they may be.”44
James is a passionate
advocate of the value of all people in the effort to live well together. He sees himself as a thinker
who focuses on the nature behind such projects, such as what Dewey calls the infinite variety of
human nature. We see these tendencies elsewhere, however. It is not only in Perry’s book that
this tendency of James’s comes out. We find it in his beginnings in medicine, his social
endeavor in the science of psychology, in his Varieties of Religious Experience, in his Will to
Believe, and most certainly, in his later work, A Pluralistic Universe. What makes one hesitate
to call James democratic thinker is primarily the sense in which he seems introspective.
Although his Pragmatism is more extroverted, his work on religion, psychology, and belief are
generally more focused on the individual’s experience than Dewey seems to be. But, for James,
the issue is not solitary. His are always issues that we all must face, and his spirit of openness
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
106
and interest in the pluralistic humility of respecting how others experience the world is
exemplary of the democratic ideal.
Department of Public Policy Leadership
The University of Mississippi
[email protected]
REFERENCES
Boydston, Jo Ann, ed. John Dewey, The Early Works, 1882–1898, 4: 1893–1894, Early Essays
and The Study of Ethics, A Syllabus. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,
1971.
_________________. John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 3: 1927–1928,
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.
_________________. John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899–1924, Volume 2: 1902–1903,
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976.
_________________. John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899–1924, Volume 12: 1920,
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982.
_________________. John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899–1924, Volume 13: 1921–1922,
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983.
Cormier, Harvey. The Truth Is What Works: William James, Pragmatism, and the Seed of
Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001.
Cotkin, George. William James, Public Philosopher. Edited by Thomas Bender, New Studies in
American Intellectual and Cultural History. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990.
Hickman, Larry A., Review of Sleeper’s The Necessity of Pragmatism in Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. XXIII, No. 3 (Summer, 1987): 446–453.
James, William. ‘Pragmatism’ and ‘The Meaning of Truth.’ Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 2000.
_________________. “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” In The Will to Believe and
Other Essays, 184–215. New York: Dover Publications, 1897/1956.
Kloppenberg, James T. Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European
and American Thought, 1870-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
107
Koopman, Colin. “William James's Politics of Personal Freedom.” Journal of Speculative
Philosophy 19, no. 2 (2005): 175-86.
Kuklick, Bruce. The Rise of American Philosophy: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1860-1930. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
Livingston, James. Pragmatism, Feminism, and Democracy: Rethinking the Politics of American
History. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of and Idea. New York:
Harper and Row Publishers, 1960.
McDermott, John J. “Review of Barzun’s A Stroll with William James,” The New England
Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 1 (1984): 127.
Miller, Joshua I. Democratic Temperament: The Legacy of William James. Lawrence, KS:
University Press of Kansas, 1997.
Perry, Ralph Barton. The Moral Economy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909.
Schlosberg, David. “Resurrecting the Pluralist Universe.” Political Research Quarterly 51, no. 3
(1998): 583–615.
Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. William James's Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy. Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1990.
Skruplekis, Ignas K., and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, eds. The Correspondence of William James,
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998–2001. (Earlier volumes than these
were not used as sources. The first of these was volume 6, 1885–1889).
Sleeper, Ralph. The Necessity of Pragmatism: John Dewey’s Conception of Philosophy. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
Smith, Andrew F. “Communication and Conviction: A Jamesian Contribution to Deliberative
Democracy.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 21, no. 4 (2007): 259–74.
Smith, Andrew F. “William James and the Politics of Moral Conflict.” Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society 40, no. 1 (2004): 135–51.
The Correspondence of John Dewey, 1859-1952, 2nd (electronic) edition. General editor, Larry
A. Hickman; editors, Barbara Levine, Anne Sharpe, Harriet Furst Simon. Published:
Charlottesville, VA : InteLex Corp., 2001.
West, Cornel. The American Evasion of Philosophy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1989.
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
108
Westbrook, Robert B. Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2005.
_________________. John Dewey and American Democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1991.
NOTES
1
Authors who have argued this point of view in a variety of ways have included James T.
Kloppenberg, Andrew F. Smith, Joshua Miller, and David Schlosberg. In a unique way, Colin Koopman
has argued that James was a political thinker, but one focused on “personal freedom.” Koopman develops
this unique approach in his article, “William James's Politics of Personal Freedom,” Journal of
Speculative Philosophy 19, 2 (2005): 175–86.
2
Andrew F. Smith offers a succinct statement of the scholarship that sees James as an
individualistic thinker.
See Andrew F. Smith, “Communication and Conviction:
A Jamesian
Contribution to Deliberative Democracy,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 21, 4 (2007): 259–274. See
especially 262, where Smith cites Westbrook and West. Consider also that George Cotkin characterized
James’s pluralism as “anarchistic,” which “impelled him to be wary of all governments, be they capitalist,
socialist, and of the institutionalization of philosophy and science,” in William James, Public Philosopher
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 17.
3
Westbrook describes James as a stubborn individualist in Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and
the Politics of Truth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 67. Once again, I am indebted to
Andrew F. Smith for pointing me to this passage, “Communication and Conviction,” 262.
4
Larry A. Hickman, Review of Sleeper’s The Necessity of Pragmatism in Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society XXIII, 3 (Summer, 1987): 446–453. Excerpt found on page 452. Brackets
added.
5
Ignas K. Skruplekis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley, eds. The Correspondence of William James,
Volume 6, 1885–1889 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 187. Referred to hereafter as
James Correspondence, followed by the volume number and dates. Brackets added.
6
James Correspondence, volume 7, 1890–1894, 162–163.
7
The correspondence of John Dewey, 1859-1952, 2nd edition. General editor, Larry A. Hickman;
editors, Barbara Levine, Anne Sharpe, Harriet Furst Simon (Charlottesville, VA : InteLex Corp.,
2001), 1892.02.08 (00463). Source will be referred to hereafter as Dewey Correspondence.
JAMES, DEWEY, AND DEMOCRACY
8
Dewey Correspondence, 1904.01.20 (00926).
9
Ibid., 1907.11.28 (04579).
109
10
The Dewey Correspondence, 1896.07.23, (09530).
11
Dewey’s important “Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” article was first published in 1896, but
it was probably not this paper that James heard, since Dewey later asks James in a letter whether he has
read it. It was first published in Psychological Review, 3 (1896): 357–70. This evidence is inconclusive,
however.
12
13
James Correspondence, volume 10, 1902–1905, 324.
See, for example, William James, “What Pragmatism Means,” in ‘Pragmatism’ and ‘The
Meaning of Truth’ (Harvard University Press, 2000), 34–37.
14
First published in Psychological Review, III (July 1896), 357–70.
15
James Correspondence, volume 11, 1905–1908, 197.
16
First published in Mind, n.s., 15, July 1906, 293–307.
17
James Correspondence, volume 11, 1905–1908, 253.
18
From Robert T. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1991), 66.
19
Essays, Philosophical and Psychological, in Honor of William James, Professor in Harvard
University, by his Colleagues at Columbia University (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908), 5380.
20
21
James Correspondence, volume 12, 1908–1910, 73.
Robert T. Westbrook discusses this letter in John Dewey and American Philosophy, 54–55.
22
23
Dewey Correspondence, 1891.06.03, (00460).
I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for William James Studies for pointing out this
element in James’s social thought.
24
Dewey Correspondence, 1891.11.22, (00461).
25
Ibid., 1903.12.19, (00802). Brackets added.
26
Dewey Correspondence, 1904.11.21, (00902).
27
Dewey Correspondence, 1909.02.24, (04580).
28
James Correspondence, volume 10, 1902–1905, 215.
The cited passage is found in a
parenthetical note.
29
According to Sleeper, “Whereas James remained, as even a sympathetic critic has remarked,
‘self-centered and abysmally ignorant of massive social inequities,’ Dewey’s melioristic conception of
philosophy drove him to unrelenting criticism of those inequities.” This passage is quoted from The
ERIC THOMAS WEBER
Necessity of Pragmatism, 202.
110
The “sympathetic critic” he mentions is none other than John J.
McDermott. Sleeper refers to McDermott’s review of Barzun’s A Stroll with William James, published in
The New England Quarterly, vol. 57, no. 1 (1984): 127.
30
John Dewey, “Social Absolutism,” John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899–1924, Volume 13:
1921–1922, Edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), 315.
31
James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European
and American Thought, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 173.
32
Dewey Correspondence, 1942.08.08, (15238).
33
John Dewey, “The Pragmatic Acquiescence” John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953,
Volume 3: 1927–1928, Edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,
1984), 149.
34
John Dewey, “Contributions to Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology” John Dewey, The
Middle Works, 1899–1924, Volume 2: 1902–1903, Edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1976), 204.
35
See, for example, Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of and
Idea. (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1960).
36
James Correspondence, volume 10, 1902–1905, 138.
37
First published in Psychological Review 9 (1902): 217–30.
38
John Dewey, “Interpretation of Savage Mind,” as found in John Dewey, The Middle Works,
1899–1924, Volume 2: 1902–1903, Edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1976), 39.
39
William James, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life,” in The Will to Believe and Other
Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Dover Publications, 1897/1956), 184.
40
John Dewey, “Moral Philosophy,” John Dewey, The Early Works, 1882–1898, Volume4: 1893–
1894, Early Essays and The Study of Ethics, A Syllabus (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1971), 132.
41
John Dewey, “Three Contemporary Philosophers,” John Dewey, The Middle Works, 1899–
1924, Volume 12: 1920, Edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press,
1982), 211.
42
Consider for instance the pioneer movement and the Haymarket affair.
43
Ralph Barton Perry, The Moral Economy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909).
44
James Correspondence, volume 12, 1908–1910.